I am well aware that the years of taking six easygoing, total-BS classes are long over. Unsurprisingly, the pace of high school did not prepare me for the pace of college whatsoever. The fact that you can have hours’ worth of homework for one class, and then more hours’ worth of homework for another class, is still, for lack of better phrase, a shitty concept. Even though I’ve been at this for nearly 3 years now, coming to terms with the fact that there will be some nights where I just have to take a zero for assignments for one class, because I was too busy meeting the overly unrealistic nightly reading assignment for another class, makes me strongly despise the professor who’s responsible—because it seems like they don’t understand that I have other classes.
I’m not going to name names or specific courses, but a lot of my professors seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day, and I am in other classes that require an equal amount of work. I also work, have to eat, try and go to the gym to at least feel like I’m healthy, and hopefully get a decent amount of rest. If I spend all my time and effort on one class, by the time I pull out my homework for my other classes, if I even make it to those subjects, my motivation is low, I’m tired, and more than likely beyond frustrated. There are only so many hours in a school/work day, and in college, you are absolutely never done. And with 100 pages to read for one class, a writing response, and an online quiz all due before the next class meeting, you will have little to no time for your other work.
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t care how much a professor assigns every night—I refuse to focus all of my time and effort on one subject. More importantly, assigning so much homework makes it very easy for students to fall behind. For example; you have 100 pages of reading for one class. You can’t do it all, because you have a reading write up for another class due at midnight, and online modules for another class do at midnight as well. You’re going to have to give something up—and, since its only reading, you push it back to a night where you might have a lighter workload, except that night never comes, and now you’re drowning in readings that you need to catch up on. The cycle is impossible to break.
I know that every professor is passionate about the subject they teach, so the fact that they place such a heavy emphasis on their course material is not a difficult concept to grasp. However, they need to understand that while they may be passionate about their subject, I am in it for a grade. And I have a thousand other tasks to complete for my other classes. It is time for them to be realistic about the amount of work they assign—the term doesn’t revolve around you, professor.